Fitness corner: The shoulder is prone to injury

If you were to go deep sea fishing, and you hooked a big one, would you hold the fishing pole at the bottom with both hands to pull it out? No, that would be much harder. You would increase your leverage by grabbing up much higher on the pole, and maybe planting the butt of the pole in a socket at the bottom to form a base and rotate.

Your shoulder is not able to do that. It is a very poor third class lever when it comes to rotating overhead. The shoulder has incredible mobility, 180 degrees in three planes. But this causes it to be relatively weaker and more unstable than other joints.

When I used to work in rehab, 20-30% of our customers had shoulder problems. That’s a huge percentage considering all the body parts to choose from. I measured my deltoid muscle that lifts the arm. It is only 6” long, whereas my arm to the fingertips is 30”. That’s a lot to ask from a 6” muscle. Then add weight and it’s easy to see why the shoulder gets injured so often.

There are many different diagnoses that you see in the shoulder, but they all come back to this poor leverage problem. The answer to improving the odds is to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles.

There are 4 rotator cuff muscles, mostly behind and below the shoulder joint that act as a base or anchor for the joint. They come together to form a cuff over the ball in the socket. They help to pull the ball of the shoulder down and back in the socket to increase leverage when the arm rotates overhead. These muscles are easily neglected if we do less activity because they are smaller than the other back muscles. They are exercised by a pulling motion, like starting a lawn mower.

There are other mechanics in the process including movement of the scapula, which has the socket. This triangular bone on the back can move and dip the socket to help. There are smaller and more specific exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles and thus help to prevent injury. Once there is a stronger base, I then like to strengthen the deltoid muscle. This can be done with bent elbows to improve leverage and decrease risk of injury.

Strong and well trained weight lifters are able to build large deltoids with straight arm exercises because of experience, and their back exercises that build the rotator cuff.

I used to see these shoulder problems in women’s aerobic classes. The women wanted to work on nice looking deltoid muscles, yet neglected the rotator cuff. Now most classes have rubber bands for rotator cuff strengthening.

Strengthening of the rotator cuff is good injury prevention. Shoulder surgery costs thousands of dollars and the rehab can last between 2-6 months.

Next: The link between astronauts and osteoporosis.

Mike Nelson is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and personal trainer in Lincoln County. He can be reached at 575-937-7030, or nellieinnm@yahoo.com.